Adding Assurance to the Term "Organic"‪.‬

Executive Summary As Americans increasingly eat healthy foods, the demand for organic foods has skyrocketed. Consumers will pay to limit their exposure to pesticides and other food toxins. But premium prices have attracted unethical food producers, often resulting in fraudulent labeling. While the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) developed national standards regulating organic food production through the National Organic Program (NOP), the government has been unable to hire and train adequate numbers of accredited certifying agents. As of 2009 the NOP reported only 55 domestic and 40 foreign accredited certifying agents (NOP, 2009) to monitor all organic products entering our food supply. To protect consumers, we suggest that the industry hire CPAs to attest that the producers, distributors and suppliers of organic foods meet certain standards. CPAs have long performed such attestation services for other industries in order to add credibility to these products and services. The Food Marketing Institute (2007) has also called for the addition of private sector auditing and certification programs. This need for assurance of the quality of organic foods provides a unique opportunity for CPAs to provide attestation services to consumers regarding the reliability of organic food producers. The CPA profession should thus promote and develop this opportunity to provide these types of services.